Hey there lady friend 1946-2004, was it really, truly necessary for you to get cancer and die? Fiancé and I are getting hitched and I don't know which is weirder, planning all this without you, or the fact that it seems totally normal for you not to be here. Sometimes I wonder how my friends with two young parents feel, like they have this amazing shelter over their heads all the time, even when it's sunny. They don't even sense it. Their mothers come to visit, laugh with them in bridal photos, hold the new baby (I don't even want to think about how bad that mile marker is going to feel). My mom's in town, we went shopping...My mom's in town, we had drinks at....I've had a bad day/I'm sick/I'm confronting a huge life decision, I want my _______. I DON'T GET TO USE THAT WORD ANYMORE I want to yell at them, at everyone. They are ignorant of the beauty of their lives with regard to this one thing--like life is an Instagram image set on deep blue nostalgia with warm yellow tones. I'll always be longing for that word, the blank space inside me. A m*+#er. A you to grow up under the umbrella of.
Who is a mother once you've lost her? Once you've sifted through the who of you and her and the selfish way you wore her like a blanket that would never fray or fade or fall off your shoulders. I mean, who was I within that embrace? I don't even know how it would be to be that again; so untouched by the world and by life. But her, she produced me. (And my brother, side note.) And yet she was more than a mother, she was this whole separate person and I won't ever know her, not all the way. I won't ever know why she stayed after she threatened to leave my dad (ultimatum: you stop drinking, or...), and he did, and she didn't, and then he started again. Is being Catholic a good enough reason to stick it out? At least she died leaving the notion of forever intact for him. (Random neighbor: Your father never got over your mother. He's still so in love with her.)
At least he didn't have to mourn her absence while she was still alive. And P.S., what kind of example does that set for me re the whole marriage concept? My poor beleaguered fiancé, I hate to imagine his sadness every time I profess that I'm scared to take the leap (something for which I've recently apologized, I think we've left that stage behind). What kind of legacy did she leave behind for me to follow?
Mother mine. Both of us fans of writing, and singing, and reading, and running, and gardening. The beach. FML some might say. FHMFL* I say, for being so much shorter than she deserved. Shorter than she probably could have made it, if she'd had the colonoscopy when she was supposed to (at 50, which would very likely have saved her life), gone to the doctor when she was tired all the time and couldn't climb the stairs without being exhausted. WTF? say I to her. You could have been here. Couldn't you? Are you still a damn fool, wherever you are? Can you please come back, just for an hour or two, just for a visit, because nobody understands that living is sometimes only part-living without you.
*Fuck her motherfucking life
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